Doctors fear chaos on wards if test not found

Doctors are racing to develop an accurate test for SARS in time to stop hospitals from being overrun from winter flu sufferers scared they have the disease.

Scientists in Melbourne are cultivating the virus from an imported sample of SARS to send on to laboratories throughout Australia for testing.

A senior virologist at Westmead Hospital, Dominic Dwyer, said yesterday he expected to have a sample of the virus within 10 days, but he was less sure about how long it would take to develop a test to diagnose severe acute respiratory syndrome.

"It's all very unpredictable, but there really is some haste to do it because we've got winter approaching and we will have viruses circulating and people getting sick," he said.

"Being able to separate these people from those who actually have SARS will be extremely important."

He said it was hard to know whether present tests for the disease were accurate because they did not have samples of SARS to work on yet.

"We're trying to get ready for what's going to happen over the coming months. By July or August we're going to have lots of sick people coming into our hospitals and it will be a strain and a lot of work."

The professor of pediatrics at Monash Medical Centre, Professor Richard Doherty, agrees there is potential for chaos if no accurate test is readily available by winter.

"The big problem is that many kids, and even many adults who fly, come down with an acute respiratory illness within a few days of landing," he said. "In winter there are plenty of other things which on the surface can look like SARS and there will be great potential for confusion."